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How to increase followers on Twitter

It’s probably one of the most asked questions for Twitter users alike – “how to increase followers on Twitter?” I don’t believe this question should be as difficult as some make it out to be. Increasing Twitter followers can be extremely simple if you want it to be and if you do it right.

Brands and businesses of all sizes can use social media – how you use it is up to you. First of all, lets discuss why you would want a presence on Twitter and why you would want to use it:

More exposure

Increased brand awareness

Ability to speak to customers directly

Share market / industry knowledge (and increase this too)

Make connections (network)

Can lead to increased sales

So you now why you want to use Twitter, the question is how and how do you do it effectively? Below is an outline of some essential, but simple tips and advice on how to increase followers on Twitter. It’s important to note, not one of these tips will produce results on its own, but should be used collectively with other methods which are relevant to you / your company.

1. Be frequent

Keep your Twitter account up-to-date and well used. You are a lot less likely to gain many followers if you rarely tweet / post anything. Gaining followers is not an instant result; it takes time and patience, but is worth it in the long run so stick at it.

Plan and devise yourself a strategy of what you want to tweet about, what’s relevant to you and your audience and how often you want to tweet i.e. daily, weekly etc…

2. Be time aware

My second tip on how to increase followers on Twitter is to be time aware. What I mean by this, is to know when your audience is most active. For example, if you’re a UK company, but your target market is in America, it should be obvious that you don’t tweet at 2pm GMT time, instead work out when it’ll be midday, or 7pm in America, when people are more likely to be enjoying their downtime and looking online.

The same applies even if your audience are here in the UK. There’s little point tweeting at 10:00am / 3pm as people are likely to be too busy at work. Instead plan your tweets for around lunch time, or perhaps first thing in the morning / evening, so you’re catching them before and after work.

Tools such as Hootsuite can be valuable in these circumstances when it will probably be beneficial for you to schedule a tweet and select a time you’d like it to be automatically posted for you.

3. Provide value

Twitter can be a very finicky place. If you’re not interesting, you’re irrelevant, seen as boring, or spammy the likelihood is you’re going to be unfollowed. The answer: provide value to your audience. This not only gives your followers a reason to stick around, but also gives others a reason to follow you.

Post interesting tips / stats, share updates or share relevant and interesting articles etc… Another added benefit of sharing useful content is that it’s likely others will share and re-tweet your content. This benefits you as it means your post and your profile will be seen by a wider audience who otherwise may not have heard of you.

4. Be ‘you’

Probably an obvious tip in my list of how to increase followers on Twitter, but ‘be you’ – don’t be afraid to include some personality.

It’s incredibly obvious when someone writes something just for the sake of writing it, or when they copy and paste something. It’s boring and it’s un-engaging (no-one wants to read something from a robot). Add in some humour, or some videos / images etc… Just get across that little piece of you / your company (but make sure it’s still relevant).

5. Find your industry

Another good tip to increase followers on Twitter is to find others who are in the same industry as you – for example, working in marketing, I follow profiles such as Marketing Magazine, Marketing Week, CIM and those who are influential in marketing. This is a great source of news, advice and information for me, but it also allows others to come across my profile and follow me in return.

6. Find discussions and get involved

My final tip on how to increase followers on Twitter also nicely compliments my above tip on finding those in your industry.

By following industry professionals you can see what they’re talking about and what questions they’re asking and get involved. This is a great way for you to network, share your knowledge and opinions and get others to find out about your brand (company or personal brand). Don’t be afraid to get involved.

Another method is to search for areas you have expertise in, by either searching for a particular search-term or via hashtags. For example, in 2012 I took part in Digital Writing Month. The official hashtag was #digiwrimo so I used this to find others who were taking part in the challenge and discuss it with them. From this I managed to come across a vast amount of other people I otherwise wouldn’t have known about and attracted some new followers because of it too!

That about wraps up my tips on how to increase followers on Twitter. I hope you give these a go and they’re both beneficial and successful for you. Do you have any other tried-and-tested tips which have worked well for you? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, or come find me on Twitter, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Thanks very much!

Amanda Cobb
I'm an Advertising graduate from Southampton Solent University, working in marketing and loving it! I like to blog about all things marketing and advertising related and tweet about it occasionally too - follow me @mandypops thanks!